 meeting of the lessons learned work group and hopefully it'll be the last meeting of this of this group. We have a majority of the senators present. We're still waiting for our co-chair, Senator Ballant, who is here, sorry. You just popped up on the screen. The initial draft report of the work group is posted on the work group's webpage and all the members, I believe, have a copy of it. And the object of today's meeting is to briefly go over, not necessarily line by line, what's in the report to make sure that we're all in agreement, that we haven't left anything important out that ought to be added at this point, and to deal with any comments that members of the committee think needs to be added to the report. We apologize that Senator Collabor's name does not appear as one of the authors on the report. That's one of the things that we will fix because our intent is to make sure that everybody involved in this exercise has their fingerprints on it somehow. Thank you, Senator. That being said, Senator Ballant, have anything to add or would you like to add something at this point? No, I just would love people to give, you know, they're once over to make sure we're really capturing what the different committees said. And if we did a good job of really calling together the main themes and we just want another set of eyes to make sure we've really captured the feeling of the Senate. Let's at this point, does anybody else on the committee have any comments that they'd like to make at this point before we start out? I just noted in our subsection that we sent in, we had a little preamble that just pointed out some really crude facts about the Vermont economy. I mean, one of the things, I guess I just wonder if others agree. It seems important to me that we just recognize that the pandemic has exacerbated. Maybe it's just a sentence like that, you know, all of the weaknesses that we're already alive and well in our economy. We did it by a paragraph about how little Vermonters have savings. You know, 46 percent of something couldn't afford a thousand dollar crisis if their car breaks down, those kinds of data points. And it doesn't have to be that, but I haven't read the whole draft. I'm just looking through and I don't see it anywhere. And it's not vital, but it does seem to me to be pretty central to, you know, if somebody said, well, why has the pandemic been so hard? I think we would have to say, well, our economy had a bunch of weak spots anyway. And, you know, so to me, that is kind of important. It doesn't have to be a big focus or anything, but it ought to be in there to kind of help if the public's watching or reading this report, us honor what the reality is for them. I don't know if others agree, but. Senator Clarkson. Hi, good morning, everybody. Sorry, I was a minute late. I agree with Chris because it's one of the lessons we've learned is that, is how vulnerable and if we're to really do something to incentivize savings or a stronger financial foundation upon which every Vermonter is resting their lives. I think that's one of the lessons we've learned that we need to actually figure out how to do something about, whether it's income, whether it's saving, whatever it is. They had a vast majority of people, I mean, a large number of people had not enough personally to rely on in this crisis when their jobs were taken away. And I do think that's one of our lessons. We've known it for a long time, but this has exacerbated it. Any other comment? But we certainly can go back following this call and examine that issue and perhaps modify the intro if all of you feel that that's something that's desirable. Senator McCormick. Yeah, thanks. I see we have a fairly long list of problems slash suggestions. And I think it's a good list and it includes some things that I've been particularly concerned about. My fear is that it's a long enough list that some things could almost get lost in it. And there are a couple of problems that I think are real standouts. And we might want to give them their own separate section. I'm thinking in particular of the fiasco at labor and the computers. And the lesson learned, I see two lessons. One is that we really need to upgrade our computer system. But the other one is no matter how excellent the computer system is, there are times when you really do need to talk to a person. Not because you feel the emotional need to, but because no one is enough of a genius to program the computers. So it actually is ready for every situation. And there are times when someone's looking at the screen and what's there does not speak to their particular situation. And they don't know what to do. They want to cooperate and they need at some point to talk to a person and getting through on the phone at labor was also so. I think upgrade the computer system and provide for direct innovative human contact as well. And I would give that its own line rather than just a click. And we might have something like have that and other problems of equal. I think the confusion about how one complies with the governor's isolation orders. You know, I got calls, do I do this or do I do that? And where do you go for that information? And is it mandatory or is it a request that I think is another, but then we could have something like other problems. And that comprehensive list goes on that. And I agree. If I could just add one thing before we go to Senator Hooker, just to highlight something that you said early on, Senator McCormick, you said, I don't know if it really is the emotional piece. I actually think that's a big part of what I heard from my constituents is actually, they just needed to hear a human because just the, even if I couldn't help them, they were like, there is somebody there. You know, we're not in some dystopian, you know, Soviet nightmare that nobody ever answers the phone. So, so I do think that can, can be part of it. And we shouldn't be shy about saying that. I don't think. Well, you know, I wonder if there's a twofold problem is obviously getting to someone human who can answer the question. But in many cases, it's because the question wasn't answered early on or wasn't apparent or couldn't be gotten to on the first click, if you will, that that then forced people to try to find somebody who could deal with complexity. And that to me is, is one of the, one of the real things as we look forward to the better use of artificial intelligence. For example, there are situations in which you have systems that learn the motor vehicle department would be a classic example. You put a tape recorder down in front of everybody who handles and answers questions with motor vehicle and you record them. And you look at those answers of questions that people ask, and then you program that into your artificial intelligence so that they get answered. And it's only those things that are so far outside of the norm that has to get routed in the first place and get answers. And this again, industry is doing this a lot and very effectively. And that's, again, one of the things we got to look at, how to answer things quickly and intelligently so that it reduces the number of times that someone has to ask for that human to go through complexity or hand-holding. And I agree with Randy about artificial intelligence and all, but one of the things that I think that we saw during this whole situation was that people were getting people who didn't have any connection, who didn't really know where to send stuff. And it had to do a lot, I think, with using outside vendors. So you talked about being able to kind of turn the responsibility or the get people who have already worked within the state system and be able to move them to different areas to help people as they call in. And that's something I think that we need to do. Because looking for vendors and stuff took a long time. We need to utilize the people that we have here in the state, especially in this situation where people were at home off from their jobs, they could have turned around and been brought back in more quickly. So the artificial intelligence thing I think is probably the way of the future, but now what do we have? And that just makes me think about all of what we're relying on that is so new age and stuff. What do we do if all of that stuff fails? What's our backup plan then? Are we ready to sort of go back to old ways of doing things if we have to? Senator Caldwell. Thank you. So if folks can look on page eight, I think just there's a piece that we can consolidate. It starts at the bottom of the page. What should we do to be better prepared? And the first thing that's addressed is the broadband access. And then if you go down a few more, it talks about schools and the ability or not ability to, I think you can close that broadband access so that all of that is included in that one statement rather than have a separate bullet point for a school situation. And to Senator McCormick's comment, I agree with him on page nine, the third bullet down has to do with the Department of Labor. That should probably be the first thing on that list about, because I do think for many of us, that was the number one. I don't want to say, well, yeah, I guess it was a complaint. It was a number one issue for so many people. It was the inability to reach anybody and to have somebody help them through that process. So I don't think it's like the eighth or ninth point. I think it's the number one point for me. Okay. Thank you. Senator Ballant. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up there. There are actually, I'm realizing four of us from Economic Development Committee. Did we ever get a clear answer from the commissioner about how much the folks at Max, what's the name of the vendor, Max? How much they were being paid? I know we had some concerns that they might be hiring people at a lower rate than would have been the going rate here. I don't know if... I don't think we've had testimony to that. Okay. No, we did not get an answer at Economic Development. We did not get an answer to that question. Correct. Okay. And we should follow up. Yeah, okay. And I think outside this report, but those of us at Economic Development should follow up on that. Yeah. Senator Clawson. I agree that this is a great bullet. I think that IT investment is sort of like the fire trucks in all our towns. We need a constant upgrade of all our IT systems. DOL was the clearest challenge in this. But we need to be cognizant that even though it's incredibly expensive, we need to be planning for it. So I agree with all of you. This needs to be front and center to the lesson we have learned is that we need constant, regular major investment in staying current. And this boy, we were really caught with our pants down. We knew that labor, one in particular, had needed upgrading for years since the recession, in fact. I mean, we were complaining about it in 2008. So really, we need a really thoughtful way to constantly invest in keeping current on IT. So I think it's bigger than labor. I think it's all of state government needs to, I mean, that needs to be front and center. Well, IT and broadband are the two things that really surface to the top. Yeah. This whole issue of connectivity is, I think in some ways, is almost greater than IT, because if you could imagine that if our connectivity failed, our ability to manage this crisis at all would be tremendously damaged. Well, there's another crisis, there's a conceivable, as Cheryl said. I mean, what happens when the grid goes down? What happened? And a cybersecurity crisis is one we are completely unprepared for. So here we are putting our eggs in the basket. It gets better prepared from an electronic communication point of view. But there's also the possibility that one of the next crises may be no electronic communication possible. It may be. I wouldn't say we're totally unprepared for cyber issues. There are backup plans. There are, there's a depth. I mean, we're not totally unprepared, but preparation obviously could be much better than and much more robust than it is right now. Yeah, I didn't mean to imply we weren't prepared. I know, I mean, I've heard from Matt and stuff. Okay. We, we started off with the preamble with just these overall observations. And I think these are very good points the committee is making. We'll try to do some modifications here today or the evening today. It's pretty bold to have a lot of time to work, but to incorporate these things and make modifications. Anything else in terms of just the preamble or the overall piece that you think we need to say or should include before we perhaps delve down a little bit in terms of some of the individual findings to make sure that we have agreement on what we've said. Then let's take a look starting at the, at the top as we go into the positive aspects of our general response to the, the pandemic. Can we put that up on screen, Mike? I'm not sure the extent to which we can zero in because everybody, is everybody able to read that or do you have the hard copies? Yeah, I printed it out so I could actually read it. Just in terms of positive aspects. I have it on my own larger screen. Yeah, I don't know that, you know, we necessarily need to read each and every line, but if the committee members could simply scan those major points under it and see if there's any disagreement or anything that ought to be added in the committee's opinion. Our committee's got up, joint rules and Senate rules were very effective in getting us organized. The committees have worked well with the administration in the emergency and we generally had good communication with the administration on this. And I think one thing that is, is a credit to the group is political agendas got shelved and folks were able to work together to get things done. Those were the high points. Anything else that, that fits into that general response? Senator Proctas is Andy. Yes. I just wanted to go back to the preamble. I don't know if we decided we were going to, I agree with Senator Pearson about putting something in there about kind of the, the shakiness of what, of our economic system was before this started. Yes, we, we will, we'll address that. I think there was a general consensus that it would be useful to put that in the preamble. So we'll, we'll take care of that. Okay, let's move on to the positive legislative and administrative action section. It appeared as if we, we believe that we did do a strong public health response in terms of what we did legislatively. Vulnerable brahmanners were protected with a safety debt. We did a great job, I think, and many of us do with our homeless population. We had virtually zero coronavirus cases, which I think is, makes us perhaps unique in the nation in that regard. We dealt with the eviction issue and expanded unemployment. Childcare plans were up and running. I don't know the sustainability of this system though. I think is certainly in question. There are many of the childcare agencies we find right now are, are struggling and we certainly will need to go back and take a look at the whole childcare issue. I, I think one of the top takeaways that's positive is the transparency to state government and to municipal government by enabling of, of, by making the open meeting a little more flexible and by meeting in the, in these fat, in this way. I think we've brought, I think one of the biggest pluses is that the increased transparency to state government and to local government through some of our legislation. I mean, all the work we did on municipal meetings and enabling, so I would, in some ways, put that, you know, up near the top. Okay. Any other questions so far? And I do speak up because I, I can't see everybody with the, the document in front. I can't see everybody who wants to speak. So please feel, feel free to, to raise any question that you have. We need the document on the screen. I don't, unless somebody's reading it, it would be easier to see each other. Does anybody not have a copy of the document in front of them? Okay, Mike, then why don't we dispense with that, that way we can see each other. We talked at least briefly here about remote learning, however, the effectiveness of it still is, is uncertain in terms of the remote learning of where we are. That is sufficiently fleshed out in terms of, we don't mention at all things like the guard and the distribution of food there, which probably ought to be mentioned in retrospect. One comment that I had on the, on the bullet point, the second whole point on page three seems kind of just like an anecdotal comment more than a lessons learned. And if we're trying to, I think there'd be some value in making the less shorter 10 pages of bullet points is Senator McCormick said it's going to give things a kind of loss. So for me, that would be an example of something we could take out unless somebody feels strong with that. The homeless patient main? No, the second one on tree, which is about some senators thought that YouTube recordings provide for witnesses provided more complete answers. Maybe some senators said that, but I don't know if just saying that some senators did something is worth saying. You say it's, it's not worthy of the list. I don't know if that's a lessons learned. So sorry, Andy, are you talking about under positive legislation, the one that says we're the second bullet, we're able to keep a safety net in place for bullets? It's bullet number two on page three. Oh, on page three. I wonder, it strikes me, Andy, that you hit on something like some of these are just sort of interesting reflections and not necessarily positives. And I don't know if the, I don't know if it warrants being in here or some other information that we should have in our back pocket or do we have another section that says, you know, are unanticipated results or I don't know. I just think it, you guys have done a great job on a first draft. And I think it now behooves all of us to actually take the time to read it and help edit and consolidate. I think that's, you've done a terrific job. We sent you a lot of, I mean, everybody sent you a lot of stuff and you've done a great first flush, you know, first stroke of it. But I think it's that kind of edit that is important. And then consolidating what are the top priorities in each section and then adding some other bullet points, but condensing it a bit as we've already talked about. One of the things is that in many cases we can deal with the summary bullet point and if need be, expand a little bit under it. But again, without creating a detailed narrative, which I think will lose people. And that may be a way to reduce the number of bullets and make those things that are at the top of the importance list up. So on this particular one that Andy's pointed out, I think that is correct. I mean, I certainly had a question on that bullet myself and that Beck and I talked about during the course of our putting this together, maybe simply talking about the transparency issue, talked about a couple of seconds ago, is the more important point in all of this is that the methodology that we've used by going online, one of the lessons we've learned is that we've been able to make what we do more transparent by bringing more people into the picture who can see what's going on. And I think that's probably the more important point that it leads to provide witnesses with more complete answers. And I'm not, frankly, sure that's a time correct on its face. That third bullet could be part of the first bullet on page three. It's just reiterating what is basically already said in the first bullet. Senator Pearson. I thought, Randy, were you just, this is a great conversation. I agree with pretty much everything people are saying. Were you just suggesting that we would have a fatter opening bullet or paragraph and then a bunch of enumerations? Was that what I heard? I was actually thinking that the opening bullet stands on its own where we are now, the opening paragraph. And I would expand a little bit of some of the succeeding bullet and consolidate them so as to have fewer bullets. Okay. That's what I was suggesting. Yeah, I think that's a good goal. You could do it either way, sort of a sub-bullet, so that if they're just indented, then, I mean, for me, I would know that I could glance at them, but I'd be really looking at them. But anyway, you slice it. I think a lot of this, I can't disagree with any of it, but a lot of it is pretty close to or could be combined in some way. Just to shorten it up because I agree with you. Well, the goal perhaps might be to reduce the number of bullets, but to make them more, to make them a bit fuller. Right. And let me just say, I was thrilled to see all the bullets because it does make it very quick to read. So I don't want to go into big paragraphs and sacrifice bullets. Yeah, that was our goal. We debated initially, do we do a narrative report and we elected to do a report with bullets because it would be easier to read and the points would stand out individually a little bit better. But I think we can get a middle ground that still focuses on the bullet approach but tries to reduce some of the volume. It has a clear way where just by order the more important ones are at the top, or like Chris just suggested, some are bolted and then some are sub-bullets that aren't as important. Just zipping down page three, if you could look over it just very quickly and see if there's anything here on here that stands out that we should focus on any additional. Well, I agree that caucuses that we have, caucuses of the whole, have made committees more aware of what other committees are doing and also helps us stay better on the overall picture of what's going on in the body. Yes. And that's what's interesting is that's something that we don't do in the regular session. And so this may, you know, this perhaps has given us something that we can use in the future. Yeah, I would agree. I think that on one of the big issues that I think one of our takeaways is going to be is building into statute abilities that when we go into an emergency certain things kick in automatically. And so to the bullet about greater flexibility in regard to, in fact, all things. I mean that what this has made very clear is that we need to enable state government to move into a mode to address quickly and flexibly certain emergencies. And we saw that not just with regulation, but with temporary licensure in a whole lot of areas. We, I think this is one of our big takeaways is that we were able to do it relatively quickly for this emergency, but that we needed actually in place so that any time an emergency happens, some of these things are open and we're able to take advantage of. Does that make sense? Yeah, so that you don't have to spend time going through the whole process again. Exactly. And it speaks to something Senator Brock has rightfully said from the beginning, which is this document can be used for many different kinds of emergencies and not just if we have another surge in the pandemic that this can really help us figure out how to respond to any emergency going forward. Right. And what we've learned should do that, Becca. I mean, so, yes. Anything else on page three that comes to mind? Well, I think I'd go back to something all of us have said in a way, which is communication. I think that two key things, unlike sort of sadly our national government, is Vermont. You know, we've made decisions based on facts and data combined with communication. And I think that the constant press conference, you know, the regular press conferences, just like Andrew Cuomo's, you know, that people rely on them just to hear what's going on every, you know, every other day or so. Those are really great strengths. And that adds to the transparency issue that we have earlier on. So that could be built on all that. And one, the bullet that says the General Assembly and the governor were largely able to achieve consensus. Was that a lesson learned? Or was that just, you know, kind of an observation? Yeah. Yeah. And we sadly haven't gotten, I think you've, we've said that in other ways, that one of the really important things is to roll together. And it's, that's all I could. Should that go as part of the preamble? Just sort of, these are. Yes. And I think it's an underscore value, and it's a value that helped make things happen faster. So that that cooperation helped us to be nimble and respond effectively together. Well, in a way, though, I think it is kind of a lessons learned for the future, because it suggests that if you have a more partisan environment, for example, in a future crisis, we should learn the lesson that if we want to get through this, we got to get together. Because otherwise, things will grind to a halt. And that to me is a lesson. Yeah. But I think we said that when we said we put political partisanship aside. So, you know, I think it says the same thing. Okay. Move, we can, to page four, half of the conversation is over in the session. We're on page four of 10. And I would like to make sure, obviously, that we finish on time. Senator McCormick. Yeah, just briefly. Thanks, Becca, before we leave the issue of bipartisanship. The bipartisanship was easy because the issue really did not break down along partisan lines. If you've got a deadly, highly contagious epidemic, what's the Republican answer to that as opposed to the Democratic answer? All of us, our answer is stop the damn epidemic. And remember back during Irene, there was in Bethel, there was a problem about the Democrats and the Republicans. One of the most conservative Republicans in town came up. He said, Senator, I just heard they're running out of drinking water in Rochester. What's the liberal answer to that? Get water to Rochester. He said, that's a conservative answer. And we loaded up the truck. So in any case, I think we want to say that nobody was really asked to eat their words. No one had to look the other way to be bipartisan. So for advocating for that, is that it was actually fairly easy because of the nature of the problem. That's all. Let's move to the top of page four. And particularly after the challenges and shortcomings, the things that we have seen, and these are observations or examples or concerns or things that we perhaps could have done better. I don't know how we do an overall bullet that says we have to come up with a way to get get financial help out easier. Once we've decided what that avenue is, we've got to be able to do it more effectively and quicker. I don't know how we, I mean, that combines so many of these bullets. Yeah, it's called out in bullet number three, Alison. Yeah. And it's an observation. Well, this is what happened. I don't know that we necessarily have the solution for the future at this point. It's like the bullet point number five, which, by the way, I would go by numbers instead of bullet points because whenever you talk about a long pointed list, you always have to say like, bullet point number seven. Right. Put them as numbers, but especially if it gets to be a smaller list, where it says many of our small businesses will not survive this emergency. Well, okay, yeah. We have several of those kind of observations that I think could be consolidated or. Right. Well, and I think your use, Andy, of that word observation, I think observations are different from actual, you know, challenges or shortcomings or priorities. I agree. The only problem with numbering them is that it implies a ranking. Yeah. I don't know if people, what we think about that, maybe it's inescapable, but if we are ranking them, like we should do that pretty deliberately. I mean, I don't know exactly how, but I'm not sure I would go with data collection for the first one. For instance, ahead of PPE or the UI stuff. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, maybe, maybe Senator Bowell and I, as we put this together, we'll wrestle with that point. Yeah, and it goes to the bigger point of do we start each section with kind of the biggest takeaways and then flush it out with a few other bullets. Some of these become dukeative also because, you know, some are sprints and some are also weaknesses and some certainly are plans for the future. You know, we continually, like the last bullet, deal with communication multiple times during the course of this report, but in slightly different ways. But that does tend to make it a little bit longer than perhaps it has to be. And so we should perhaps look at that again. The fourth bullet from the bottom, I think, is a clear takeaway that lessons learned that we need more effective, clearer messaging portals into every system that, you know, we all know which are the good, you know, I hate all the jargon, but when you land on a page, we all know which ones are clearer and which ones aren't. And I guess that we call that dashboards, but whatever we call it, that is, you know, so many people have told me they were confused by things and didn't know where to, you know, how to navigate it all. All of it needs to be simpler, easier, more direct. Just that's, I think, something we, a big takeaway. And the fifth bullet point up from the bottom of that paper thing can be deleted. We've already said that a thousand times elsewhere about the need for broadband and et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Let's move to page five. I think the first three bullets could be flushed, validated, and edited. They all sort of slightly get to the same thing. Any other comment? The fourth bullet point can be deleted again because we've already said it. Which one? The fourth bullet point down about connectivity. Yeah. Well, that's going to be its own section, I would think, and then all of the things come under it. Well, we're saying the same thing in a way, but we're also saying it's slightly differently and from a somewhat different perspective. I think one of the things in the first three bullet points, when we look at how we work together and the difference between working together remotely and working together in person. I mean, I think that, for me, I am appreciating how much work in getting to, yes, we actually do in the hallway, and how much of our understanding the barriers each of us face to certain policy or to certain work that isn't necessarily a public thing. I mean, not everything. And how much of that is important to our moving forward in our policy work together. And I think that's an intangible, but very important aspect of our working in person that we are failing to have the time for that kind of work remotely. And it's true. Unless you're going to pick up the phone immediately after a meeting together, a Zoom meeting, and address that, and we often don't have time for that because then we're rushing to go get a bite of lunch before your next meeting starts. Or, you know, we're doing it during the meeting, right? Yeah. Or, yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. As we now all know. Well, in a way, you know, some of this does become, though, because as we find an issue of something that didn't work particularly well, and then you go to the section of the challenges of the future, well, it's, you know, how do you fix the thing that didn't work particularly well? So again, we have these last from the bottom, the third from the bottom and the second from the bottom, or the third from the bottom in particular is something that we've talked more and more about. And repeatedly. And again, it's how we consolidate that. You know, it's, again, I think, you know, the notion of creating a report that is somewhat less lengthy, has somewhat fewer bullets, that might be helpful. But, you know, I'm reminded of that quote falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln about the Gettysburg address. I would have written a shorter speech, but it would have taken too long. Well, we could all, you know, commit to taking a pass and slashing out or combining some of these. We're all cranking. I know that. So, you know, if any of us get the time by eight o'clock tonight to do that, we could send it to you, you know, with a short deadline on our side. So you're not left waiting and not doing. I don't know. I don't know. We also, it's also pretty good. And we could just ship it right now, if that. Well, I do one or two. I mean, I think there's some basic consolidation we could do to make it a little less. Brian was pointing out, we do mention that. But I think, Chris, to go to that point, one of the biggest bullets that we identify also all the way through this is how vulnerable Vermonters were. Much more vulnerable than I think we thought. So, you know, here the second bullet from the bottom is many Vermonters face food insecurity. Well, they faced a lot of insecurities that, and a lot of, I would say, vulnerability that it was, the protective sheath was only paycheck to paycheck. I mean, it was the vulnerable sheath is, but it's, it's, it's economic insecurity in large measure. And I think that is really may I mean, it doesn't surprise those of us who've heard it, but to see it was really stark. And anyway, I think that's Did you have something, Senator Ballant? No, okay. Senator McCormick. Thanks. But I think what we can do is go back to what we, when we were taught in middle school how to write a paper. One thing we can do is just go through this long list and find duplications, and there's, there actually are duplications where they're not perfect to perfectly duplicative. They're both covering different aspects of the same thing. And kind of say this, just like if you were writing your weekly legislative report, how you do the rewrite, the other thing is to think in terms of categories, I think we can get a number of, of these one-liners and you realize which groups each they fall into, and then a heading for that group. So just communications and everything for having to do with communications. We can break it down, I think, the economy, the macro economy of the state, business economy, the finances of the state, individual family finances, and they would all go under the larger heading of financial. And then communication. And the same thing with communication, the computer stuff, the lack of a human being behind the computer, and also communicating the governor's edicts and communicating back and forth. And I think it could be, and of course it's easy for me to say because I hadn't planned on actually doing any rewriting. I will, I will make an offer if I can find the time today. I'll try to get something done. That would be great. What I was going to say before when I had food in my mouth, Senator Brock, was that I know for me, I am, I do not have even a moment to use the bathroom until 5.30 today because I have zooms all day long. So if there are people in the group that have even just a little extra time, I know we're all flat out. I think having a small group, two or three just bang out and get us another draft. But I know that I do not have the time today. So I just wanted to put that out there and transparent in that way. I'll see if I could steal time. I don't have the time either, but yeah. Well, I mean, we all have that problem as you know, but to the extent that we can get input from any of you to us and we know that the input will be different, then we have some things to select from that we can put together without having to start from scratch. And that would be very, very helpful. Yeah, well, the young people are supposedly good at multitasking. Older people were actually not only not taught to multitask, we were taught not to multitask. One thing at a time, Dick. Thank goodness I'm old. That must have been for men. Finish what you're doing. We have five pages to go, so let's move on to. I don't know if I classify as young anymore. Let's move on to the balance of page five. Any other comments on that before we move to the next page? We have just there's consolidation to do here that I'll ask. Yeah, it's just ongoing. We're on page six at this point. Now there, one of the things that we did is we simply included the straight observations from JFO and Ledge Council, at least at a high level, based on material that they provided us without going into depth. Randy, I think the first three bullet points can all be consolidated, maybe even the first four. They all have to do with dairy and farms. I don't, I mean, I think they're all related. I don't think each of them needs a bullet. Okay. And for that matter, it may well be the last bullet point on page five as part of that also. Yeah. Well, also, well, I think the food insecurity is its own separate issue because the coordination that you mentioned in bullet five here on page six goes with the last two bullets of page five, which is how do we coordinate better the food distribution for the enormous food insecurity in the state? How do we better coordinate and make it seem plus the distribution and the distribution to the outlets and then the distribution to the people? Let's move to the last bullet on page six and following changes that should be made going forward. And then on to page seven. I'm not sure I understand. Continuity. I'm sorry, Chris. Well, the General Assembly's continuity of government plans What do you mean? That's a term that is used to talk about our business contingency plan. What do we do to ensure that we stay in business doing what we're supposed to do in the event of various kinds of crises? There are continuity of government plan. There is in fact a continuity of government plan relative to legislative operations that's maintained by the sergeant and arms and also by the Capitol Police, for example, to keep us at business. But there aren't real that I can determine continuity of government plans involving the legislature and what the legislature itself does. I read this and I think you mean what do we do if the speaker dies? Well, that's another that is part of it. Yes. We do address that later in the report because it is unclear. It's also unclear in terms of just succession planning from the administration. It stops at a certain point and doesn't go into the level of depth that you see with the federal government. And of course, the question that I think we've raised here is what happens if there's a terrorist attack on the State House during the State of the Union address? What happens? And again, you say these may be very unlikely things to happen, but you know, a pandemic was pretty unlikely too. Right. But that goes to the sergeant and arms and Capitol Police. I think we would want it. They do have that kind of operational plan for how we survive that. But what isn't there, as you say, is the sort of more legislative, you know, the interworking. I think they and Matt can explain it better than we. But there is the plan for physical, the physicality and operational aspect, but not the interpersonal hierarchy. You know, who does what in terms of leadership? What part? I don't have a better word for it at this hour. Again, other changes that need to be made going forward. There are a list of a variety of things to think about on pages, the bottom of page six, and then through page seven, any comment on any of those items, any consolidation that you think is is useful or desirable to have? Anything observational that perhaps should be deleted? Well, I think a lot of these bullets can be consolidated. I mean, just we need to have contact information for absolutely everybody and emergency contact information. So that's a couple bullets that could be consolidated. I have a question for the editing piece, just quick a process. Is there any way to get a Word document of this that we'd be able to rearrange ourselves and stuff? You know, I printed out, but I go, you're gonna get my chicken handwriting, scratch notes, or I can track changes when I when I look at a Word document might be easier for us. You know, I'll just save it as parent edits and, you know, everyone put their last name edits. Yeah, I've got a Word document of this. Mike, would it be possible to send a Word document to each member of the committee? Yes. Mike, are you there? Yep, I'm here. I'm sending it now. Great, thank you. You're welcome. Amazing. Okay, anything else on page seven, other than the general theme of consolidation and avoiding duplication? Okay, let's go to page eight, which continues that theme of things that we need to do. And again, JFO and Ledge Council are listed separately based on their their own input. That's great that we have their input. That was very good of you to reach out to them. Now as we move on then to the bottom of eight of doing, what do we need to do better to prepare for the next crisis? And again, some of those recurring themes keep popping back up a broadband of course. Well, I think one of the key takeaways is we need our statutes to be better prepared to kick into action, a different set of opportunities in our statutes to kick into action when a declared crisis, when a crisis, when something is declared as a crisis. So that, I mean, we, you know, to go, but I don't, but I don't want to repeat, but I mean, I think that's one of the things is we need to be better prepared in our statutes to enable things to happen if X, Y or Z occur. And much of what we've done is particular to this pandemic and this situation. And what do we have to do to say, you know, this is the type of thing that happens regardless of the emergency and that these things should kick into place, whether it's, you know, the legislature can act remotely or whatever it is. But do we need to have something in place? You talked about a handbook. Is that something that needs to be stated that there are things that would kick in? Well, we also, I think have to recognize that there are different kinds of crises that divide, that demand different kinds of responses. And the key in a way is to find those things that really transcend the type of crisis that we put in an effect as one section that kicks in, but at the same time recognize that we can't really manage a crisis that we may try to think about every kind of crisis, but we're not going to think about every kind of crisis. We also don't have the ability to manage what a future legislature does. So instead getting that balance point of what we put into legislation like that is going to be the trick. And I don't, we're not going to think through that sufficiently to put it in this report, but just at a high level, touch on it. I can't have my name advocating to end snow days. So Randy, Chris and I have an ag meeting in five minutes. And I have an economic development committee meeting. We all have committee. So therefore we'll skip over the last two pages because they aren't really important anyway. So let's go very, very quickly here of being prepared for the next crisis of anything on a high level. We're at the top of page nine at this point. We've already talked about this issue of critical IT systems, the third bullet down and again, elevating and consolidating some of those pieces and talking about this history of IT projects, of how we will we do better going forward and tell if I would try this plan. Again, a lot of that does in fact go together. Randy, sorry. There's a lot of questions in this section. So I wondered if questions would be better broken up like this is what, what, what do we need to do better? But then we're just a bunch of questions like which are good questions. Maybe I would put the answers in if I'd known them. That's right. I was going to say that's called the kitchen sink. Right. But maybe we put all the questions in this same like here are the questions that we need to answer. As we go into the top of page 10 is again in many cases are more questions of how the General Assembly would meet if a joint meeting were required and social distances was needed. Have we assessed the full range of risks? What happens if there's no internet availability? These are all questions, but they're things that as we plan for the next contingency, the next event, they're things that we need to be thinking about now. And the purpose of this is really to identify many of those things because that's a lesson that, you know, we wouldn't have thought about many of these things to even try to identify had we not gone through an exercise like this. Anything else before we've, we've got about two minutes before we have to move on to our next event. Is there anything else that any member of the committee would like to raise? Well, just thanks for getting it to this point because there's a lot. I mean, there's a lot here. Let us then look at this evening of those folks who are going to voluntarily help to try to consolidate some of this stuff. You want to do this on a gross basis or do you each want to take a perhaps a section and attack? My sense is doing it on a gross basis so that we have a variety of perspectives is probably the better way. And that way, when Beck and I beginning tomorrow try to put this together in final form, we'll have all of those thoughts consolidated. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Well, again, thank you all very, very much for all the help. It's been great. You guys have really, you've written this report. We certainly haven't because of the input you have. So thank you. And we'll determine based on how, what we get back, how quickly we can put together a final product, whether we need to meet again or whether based on the input today, we can produce the final report. So on that note, it's just about three minutes to nine. So thank you very much. Thank you all. Thank you.